Gaming Blend Monthly Recap: October, 2012

October is officially behind us. It was a rather weird month with a lot of slow paced, mediocre news to fill out the ends of the week. It wasn't until the final days of October did things really kick it into gear and go full-on sloppy-drunk-celebrity-out-on-the-town. The major highlight of October was, of course, Rab Florence from Eurogamer hanging up the boots because of legal threats looming over the heads of Eurogamer due to libel charges. It wasn't just that, though, it was because Florence did what no self-respecting, large-as-they-come gaming media site had the balls to simply say: Hey! Look at all these goofs that aren't really journalists but are actually advertorialists! Look. At. Them! Because of that, the gates of shame were opened and instead of embracing humility many advertorialists fired back with a swath of righteous fury. All this and not much else in this October, 2012 Monthly Recap.

September 30th – October 6th: Cliffy B Leaves Epic Games, Resident Evil 6 Reviews, Star Wars First Assault With all the hoopla over Disney purchasing the Star Wars license, I suppose this really does beg the question of what happens to the unannounced Xbox Live Arcade game, Star Wars: Firs Assault? I doubt they would go through the trouble of listing the game and creating box art for now reason...right? Well, this news was mostly overshadowed this first week of October because Cliffy B., the creator of Gears of War, decided to leave Epic Games and pursue his dream of creating space rainbows and armored unicorn marines. I don't know how well either venture will turn out, but I'm really pull for those space rainbows. Resident Evil 6 reviews also dropped and reviewers threw out some wild scores that still has the community in an uproar, you'll have to read that saga for yourself to see what happened.

October 7th – October 13th: Star Citizen Announced, Bethesda's PS3 Troubles, Sony Sues Kevin Butler This was a strange week of news, mostly because Sony decided to sue the actor that portrays their frontman of Kevin Butler. The reason they sue the guy is pretty ridiculous but well worth checking out. Bethesda dug themselves in a deeper grave with PS3 users thanks to the troubles of Skyrim's DLC. There's no easy fix to the situation but hopefully they can work something out. Also, Chris Robert's Star Citizen debuted during this week and it's already become a blockbuster Kickstarter.

October 14th – October 20th: Halo 4 Endings Leaked, Wii U Child Labor, IGN Auctioned Off Microsoft worked fast and hard to remove all the videos of the Halo 4 endings that have surfaced after the game itself was leaked to torrents nearly a month before release. Nintendo managed to get caught in a scandal over a Foxconn child labor dispute, which really called into question the ethics of overseas tech manufacturing, and News Corp actually publicly admitted that IGN is being auctioned off...tough break.

October 21st – October 27th: The Fall of Zynga, Eurogamer Fiasco, Square Licenses Unreal Engine 4 One of the biggest (and could potentially turn out to be the smallest) social gaming companies starts collapsing faster than Andre the Giant at his father's funeral. The casual giant tried to hide their corporate crumbling by firing people during Apple's announcement of the iPad Mini. Real classy. Square is also the first big company to license Epic's Unreal Engine 4 and this was the week where video game journalism got kicked so hard in the nuts that the internet threw up a lot of crap that made us all go “eww”.

October 28th – November 3rd: Assassin's Creed 3 Launch, Halo 4 Review, Modern Warfare 4 Rurmored The fallout from the Eurogamer fiasco continues onward and upward, with many top sites starting to chime in on the perception of “corruption”. Amidst this introspection are the more notable items of the week, including the launch of Assassin's Creed III and the rollout of reviews for Halo 4. The real kicker was the slip about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, which Activision worked hard and fast to bury because they don't want the game meddling with their rock-solid stock.